


Settling In

by Frenchy



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gift Fic, Multiple Wardens, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 02:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3960256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frenchy/pseuds/Frenchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Linwë Tabris finds herself slightly more overwhelmed with the prospects of Alistair becoming King than she had originally anticipated.</p><p> </p><p>A gift fic I wrote for a friend of mine based on a tumblr prompt and only added here because of the terrible font size of my blog. A whole lot of fluff, just for fluff's sake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settling In

If there is one thing that Linwe is not overly fond of, it’s politics.

A shame, really, because she’s apparently due for an overwhelming amount of it now; Alistair had spent the last three days dragged though each and every inch of the palace halls, through introduction procedures that the coronation hadn’t had the capacity to cover, and she’d been towed along behind him in a patient show of solidarity that was slowly driving her mad. The court had been surprisingly accommodating to an elf, perhaps if only because they saw her as a Grey Warden, as one of the heroes of the Blight, rather than a would-be queen. Would-be, of course, if she were _human_.

Still, they’d allowed her to absorb as much of their seemingly endless knowledge of the day-in-day-out procedures of nobility as she could stand and when Lin had taken leave of them, they had graciously let her go. She’d waited until she rounded a corner before she made a clean break for Alistair’s room. The door is unlocked, of course – the man still wasn’t convinced of the necessity of locked doors to someone of his stature, despite both Alexandria and Zevran’s insistent warnings – and blessedly empty. She slips inside, lets the door creak shut behind her and then finally, finally Lin lets herself wilt into a deeply felt groan. Somehow, subjecting herself to nobles’ clothing ties more knots in her back than her armor ever had. She shucks the offensive garment off within seconds, dropping the heavy brocade monstrosity to the ground while she hunts for one of the worn tunics she’d smuggled in, the ones that still smelled a bit like churned dirt and rainwater. She certainly wouldn’t miss sprawling out on tough, rocky ground, but there was something to be said for a camp where ‘underdressed’ had been Alexandria storming across the camp and barely covered by the furs she’d pulled around herself.  Lin chuckles at the memory and drags the tunic over her head. _That_ was something she’d miss.

She misses it now, in fact, the brisk smell of pine and cold that had for the past year indicated a decent place to make camp. In this place there is just perfume and incense from the Chantry, mingled with the acrid musk of burning torches that already reminds her too thoroughly of her stay in the Arl of Denerim’s estate. Her mouth presses into a thin line and her eyes go directly to the shuttered window, where the towers of the estate loom too close for her to be totally comfortable. It had somehow survived the darkspawn horde’s attack with only minor damages, as to be expected of any place built for nobility, and thankfully Eamon had used that stroke of luck to give many of the refugees a temporary home while Denerim recovered.

All of the good that had come of that wretched place didn’t stop the knot the coiled in her stomach every time she saw it though and now the musk and the memories are too much. Lin crosses immediately to the window and throws back the shutters, opening the room into something else, into fresh air and sunlight and voices and –

And _music_.

The palace is large, of course, and set far enough away from the usual rabble of the common people to keep the nobility from having to bump shoulders with them, but some of its edges still spill into the poorer districts. Her window opens to a large corner of one of the freeman neighborhoods, and to a tavern with its doors pushed wide open so that the sounds of voices and plucked lutes could entice in the few who could spare coin or had a desperate need for drink after a long day of hauling stones and bodies away. The call to arms during the Blight had revived the old Ferelden spirit of unification, and every able body that could work did, spending their days dismantling the rubble in the city and repairing what they could. The less-able opened their stores and shops to their working neighbors, doling out drink or aid or morale freely if they could and at discounted prices if they couldn’t. Everyone knew it would be a short-lived peace, the kind still peppered with suspicion and prejudice, but by the grace of Andraste that hasn’t stopped the sense of camaraderie that flung this particular tavern’s doors wide. Lin sinks onto the window’s ledge with a weighty sigh, resting her head against the frame and closing her eyes against the rush of wind that thankfully no longer reeks of darkspawn and charred wood. The tavern song suddenly changes, and the sound of the lute drowns in the half-slurred words that are more laughing chant than song. Lin smiles into the wood despite herself; it certainly wasn’t a camp in the middle of the woods, but she could stand to spend some time here.

It’s halfway through the third shanty before the door creaking open behind her drags her attention away from the tavern. Alistair squints in the sudden brightness of the room, but he somehow doesn’t miss her if the brilliant grin that spreads across his face is to be believed. She smiles back and the warmth blooming on her cheeks spreads all the way down to her toes as he saunters over.

“Managed to escape before they caught you with the seven hour tour through Ferelden royal history, I see,” He says, strolling to a stop next to her perch on the windowsill. With a roll of her eyes, Lin swings her legs back over the edge of the window and drops to the floor.

“I convinced them that to listen to anything less than the entire seven hours would be a travesty and that I simply didn’t have the time today,” She quips back immediately, with all of the airs of one of the hundreds of stuffy human nobles she’d been forced to sit around with all day. Alistair buckles into peals of laughter.

“That’s good! Maybe I should use that,” He says around the chuckling that peters slowly away, and around the grin that never does. His hands smooth against the curve of her jaw, the pressure there an attempt to pull her face up to meet his, tentative and gentle and more question than demand. Lin threads her hands into the hair on the nape of his neck in reply, façade very suddenly forgotten and smiling into the kiss that she pulls herself up to meet. She feels him sigh against her lips, and the tension of a hundred kings uncoils from his shoulders, out of the hands that are sliding off of her neck and down to the small of her back and pulling her up, closer, deeper into the kiss until _she’s_ the one sighing.

When he finally pulls away, it’s haltingly, reluctantly, and he’s still grinning like an idiot with hands still clasped around the fabric on the back of her tunic.

“So if you weren’t being subjected to the history of the royal lineage, what _were_ you doing?”

She nods to the window where the next round of thumping on tables has started up again, woefully out of time with the chant-singing wafting out of the tavern windows. Alistair cocks his head to one side, drawing away from her just enough to step closer to the window, closer to the muffled rumble that might be words or might just be drunken slurring. Then he laughs.

“I’ve heard this one before, if you can believe it. The Wardens stopped at an inn where this was playing right after I was recruited. I’m surprised they didn’t kick us out, actually,” He grins when the tempo of the banging picks up. “Sounded a lot like this too, all banging on tables, knocking over chairs, dancing with serving girls…”

His grin dwindles as his words trail off into silence, the same silence that always crops up whenever he’s wont to remember the Wardens in better times. The battle of Denerim had been a bloodbath despite their victory, and it’d dredged up more than a few of the worse memories of Ostagar; thinking of the Wardens now only served to invite their ghosts in. Lin slips a hand into Alistair’s, squeezing lightly as if that can somehow call off his memories. And it does, at least for a moment. The faraway look he’d been brushing over the rooftops of Denerim snaps immediately back to her and she coaxes up a smile that has as much mischief tied into it as she dares.

“Did _you_ dance with serving girls?”

The color drains very suddenly out of Alistair’s face and he sputters, dragged further back into reality with question she just _knows_ he hears accusation in. “N-No, I- _I_ didn’t, I just –”

The quiet laughter bubbling up from behind her façade gives her away almost immediately. Alistair’s words dry up somewhere between his head and his mouth, leaving him gaping at her for what feels like much too terribly long. If he’s worked out her game at all though, he doesn’t show it and instead, she watches an impish grin dance back onto his lips.

“I _didn’t_ dance with any serving girls back then, no.” And this time his voice comes out steady, unwavering for once as he slips one arm back around her waist. “But I’d like to dance with _you_.”

A flurry of heat sinks into her stomach as Alistair draws her back up to him, just as hesitant, just as gentle, with all of the intent of asking a question they both knew she’d say yes to. And she does, in some capacity, maneuvering the hand still clasped around his up and out of the space between them until they must look like they have _some_ idea of what they’re doing. Then Alistair takes a fumbling step to the side, tries to draw her after him until she trips too and a curse hisses between his teeth. His brows draw together, dark eyes narrowed underneath them and leaking that bold confidence he’d been so proud of only a couple of seconds ago. A nervous little chuckle trickles out of Lin’s lips and into the folds of his doublet, and she feels tightness run suddenly rigid through the shoulders her hand his draped over. _Embarrassed_. She corrects herself, smiles, a wobbly, apologetic little thing as her eyes flick to meet him. Lin chances at the next leading step this time, and this time he follows, a bit easier, with less resistance and more of the grace that Ferelden must expect of their king. _Bad things happen when I lead_. At least they hadn’t quite gotten to the lost-without-pants stage quite yet.

The steps smooth out after that, Lin wobbling between leading and following in much of the same way she always had, pulled close enough to Alistair’s chest that it might mimic intimacy if Zevran were around to point it out. Fortunately he is not, and Lin settles for letting the strange flutter of warmth in her stomach spread out fine and comfortable across her skin. They’re terribly off tempo with the rattling of the tables outside and have forgone any sort of artistry in favor of what amounts to a lot of awkward swaying, but it’s been far too long since they’ve had a moment to spare for one another and frankly, she doesn’t care. Alistair must be thinking the same, because he leans down as far as he can manage while still keeping position and presses a kiss onto her forehead.

“I love you, Lin.”

She smiles, hunkers a little deeper into the hem of her tunic as if that will somehow ease the red flush of her cheeks. “I love yo –”

“ _Alistair!_ ”

The voice leaps suddenly between them, pushing them apart with the same force that flings the door   of the chambers wide open.

“ – believe it’s _Your Majesty_ now.” Zevran’s voice floats in too, still muffled by the five or six steps he has put between himself and the woman pushing her way inside.

“Which I will use when we’re so sick of each other that he addresses me only as the Hero of Ferelden,” Alexandria quips back, never looking up from the dirt-smeared vellum that is almost as smudged and ruffled as she is. “Alistair, I’ve been to the docks and it looks like they’re mostly functional again, which means that we’ve finally got the resources in place to start importing materials. Now, what I’m wondering is if…” Apparently, she intends to talk into infinity, and into the vellum without bothering to look up. Alistair clears his throat once, loudly, but it’s like she doesn’t even hear him. He tries again.

“Alexandria.”

“I know, I know, it’s a ridiculous amount of coin, but you _know_ that dwarven stonework is the best out there – ”

“Alex!”

“Just hear me out, I promise…”

Alistair shakes his head, one long, wide stare switching from Lin to Zevran as he thrusts his palms out in indignation. The assassin shrugs, grin unwavering despite his supposed sympathies until Alistair flings his hands towards him again – _do **something**_! – and the elf sags into a long sigh and a roll of his eyes that Lin can tell already implies that Alistair will owe him a great deal for his service. His ‘service’, of course, involving slinking up to Alexandria’s side, smoothing a hand over her own and gradually pushing the vellum out of her line of sight.

“Alexandria, my dear,” Lin hears him purr. “Perhaps we should give the king and his beloved some time alone, hm?” For the first time, the warrior’s blue eyes snap up to take in Lin, underdressed and cheeks still burning red, and Alistair, who has somehow pulled together the most impressive façade of an offended monarch that Lin has ever seen, complete with arms folded stiffly over his chest and a stony frown.

“Oh.”

 “Zevran,” He rumbles, voice rough and sharp with malice despite the grin Lin can see peeking from behind the gruff front he has conjured. “Please escort the _Hero of Ferelden_ out of my chambers.” Alexandria’s eyebrows shoot nearly up to her hairline in affront to the title but she must at some point recognize how thoroughly he has twisted her words against her because when Zevran presses a hand to the small of her back, she drops suddenly into an outrageously low bow.

“We’ll speak of this later, then. My apologies, _Your Majesty_ ,” She replies, all smug smoothness hidden behind her half-lidded stare. Then she pulls herself upright, flashes Lin a wink, snatches Zevran by the crook of his arm and marches them both right out of the door. Alistair waits until the sound of both sets of boots disappear down the hall before letting his grin finally overtake the surly scowl he’d been wearing.

“Maker’s breath, you’d think there was a second Blight coming with the way she storms into everything,” He says around a weary laugh. “There’s no stopping her.”

Lin tips her head to one side, mimicking a look of deliberation. “Well, there are some ways. How do you feel about locked doors now, _Your Majesty_?”

“Oh now don’t _you_ start with that.”

He scoops her back into his arms, fingers pressing into her sides until she giggles.

“Now, where were we? Ah yes,” He relinquishes his hold long enough to twine one hand in hers and pull them back into their awkward swaying. “You were just going to tell me something important, I think.”

Lin rolls her eyes, but the smile creasing her lips bleeds genuine.

“So I was.”

The hand draped over his shoulder trails up past his collar, around to the back of his neck, pulling him down to _her_ for once and he obliges, leaning down and into the kiss that he expects. Lin smiles though, smiles against the mouth that almost meets hers and pushes herself up onto her toes before dropping a kiss onto his nose.

 “You are a _terrible_ dancer.”

 


End file.
